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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
POLITICAL MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT
SERIES EDITOR: JENNIFER LEES-MARSHMENT

Political Marketing in
the 2020 U.S.
Presidential Election
Edited by
Jamie Gillies
Palgrave Studies in Political Marketing and
Management

Series Editor
Jennifer Lees-Marshment
Faculty of Arts, Political Studies
University of Auckland
Auckland, New Zealand
Palgrave Studies in Political Marketing and Management (PalPMM) series
publishes high quality and ground-breaking academic research on this
growing area of government and political behaviour that attracts increas-
ing attention from scholarship, teachers, the media and the public. It cov-
ers political marketing intelligence including polling, focus groups, role
play, co-creation, segmentation, voter profiling, stakeholder insight; the
political consumer; political management including crisis management,
change management, issues management, reputation management, deliv-
ery management; political advising; political strategy such as positioning,
targeting, market-orientation, political branding; political leadership in all
its many different forms and arena; political organization including man-
aging a political office, political HR, internal party marketing; political
communication management such as public relations and e-marketing and
ethics of political marketing and management.
For more information email the series editor Jennifer Lees-Marshment
on j.lees-marshment@auckland.ac.nz and see https://leesmarshment.
wordpress.com/pmm-book-series/.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14601
 Jamie Gillies
Editor

Political Marketing
in the 2020
U.S. Presidential
Election
Editor
Jamie Gillies
Communications and Public Policy
St. Thomas University
Fredericton, NB, Canada

Palgrave Studies in Political Marketing and Management

ISBN 978-3-030-86558-0    ISBN 978-3-030-86559-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86559-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is dedicated to the memory of my Grandma, Betty Porter, who loved
to talk about the spectacle of American politics.
 Acknowledgments

The Palgrave Pivot series is an ideal home for this early published collec-
tion on the 2020 election. Inspired by recent rapidly assembled academic
collections, especially those on the American (Gillies 2017), Canadian
(Marland and Giasson 2015, 2020; Gillies et al. 2020), and British
(Jackson and Thorsen 2015; Lilleker and Pack 2016) elections of the
2010s, the increasing importance and impact of early research on elections
matters greatly. While later volumes and more extensive research on the
2020 presidential election will employ more extensive empirical analysis of
aspects of this campaign, each contributor in this book worked tirelessly to
complete chapters in less than three months following the election and
events following November. The research was then book-edited, series-­
edited, peer-edited, and publisher-edited in a compressed timeframe in
order to produce this book and get it to market for early impact. I am
extremely grateful, first and foremost, to Palgrave Studies in Political
Marketing and Management Series Editor Jennifer Lees-Marshment for
her support and dedication to these projects. All at Palgrave, especially
Ambra Finotello, Charanya Manoharan, Dhanalakshmi Muralidharan, and
Karthika Devi, were so supportive and helpful.
I am very thankful for the support and friendship of my colleagues Tom
Bateman, Philip Lee, Patrick Malcolmson, Shaun Narine, Greg Payne,
Vincent Raynauld, and André Turcotte. And I am always grateful for the
administrative support of Lehanne Knowlton. These edited collections have
also benefitted from the support of the annual regional conferences of both
the New England Political Science Association and the Atlantic Provinces
Political Science Association, where many chapters have been presented and

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

discussed, and the American Behavioral Scientist Retrospective and Pizza &
Politics Tuesdays at Emerson College where robust discussion of the elec-
tion helped frame the book. It also would not be a presidential election
without the support of my good friends Adam Becker and Liz Hebert who
lived this campaign with me. And lastly, I am very thankful for all of the sup-
port of my partner and daughter for putting up with the political saturation
of our household during each election season and my parents, who call
regularly and say, “We were just watching Fareed Zakaria and did you see
that…?” May the Joe Biden years be less chaotic!

References
Gillies, Jamie. ed. 2017. Political Marketing in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.
London: Palgrave Pivot.
Gillies, Jamie, Vincent Raynauld, and André Turcotte. eds. 2020. Political
Marketing in the 2019 Canadian Election. London: Palgrave Pivot.
Jackson, Daniel, and Einar Thorsen. 2015. UK Election Analysis 2015: Media,
Voters and the Campaign, Early Reflections from Leading UK Academics.
Bournemouth: Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community.
Lilleker, Darren, and Mark Pack. 2016. Political Marketing and the 2015 UK
General Election. London: Palgrave Pivot.
Marland, Alex, and Thierry Giasson, eds. 2015. Canadian Election Analysis 2015:
Communication, Strategy, and Canadian Democracy. Vancouver: UBC Press/
Samara Press.
———, eds. 2020. Inside the Campaign: Managing Elections in Canada.
Vancouver: UBC Press.
 Contents

1 Introduction: The Right Candidate at the Worst Time  1

Jamie Gillies

2 Playing Catch Up from a Basement in Delaware: How the

Biden Campaign Marketed ‘Joe’  7
Jamie Gillies

3 Replicating the 2016 “Lightning in a Bottle” Political

Moment: Biden, Trump, and Winning the U.S. Presidency 21
Vincent Raynauld and André Turcotte

4 The 2020 Campaign: Candidates in a New World 41

Neil Bendle and Purushottam Papatla

5 Trump’s Marketing Strategy and Communication in

Government and the 2020 Election: Failing to Adjust to
the White House and Governing 65
Edward Elder and Jennifer Lees-Marshment

6 Democracy and Disinformation: An Analysis of Trump’s

2020 Reelection Campaign 83
Brian Conley

ix
x Contents

7 Donald Trump: The Brand, the Disjunctive Leader, and

Brand Ethics105
Kenneth Cosgrove

8 Trump, Populism and the Pandemic125

Robert Busby

9 Conclusion: The 2020 Presidential Election and Aftermath

Was One for the Ages143
Jamie Gillies

Index149
 Notes on Contributors

Neil Bendle is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Terry College of

Business, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
Robert Busby is Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of History
and Politics, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK.
Brian Conley is Associate Professor and Program Director of Applied
Politics and Global Policy in the Political Science and Legal Studies
Department, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Kenneth Cosgrove is Professor in the Political Science and Legal Studies
Department, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Edward Elder is a Professional Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Arts,
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Jamie Gillies is Associate Professor of Communications and Public Policy
and Executive Director of the Frank McKenna Centre for Communications
and Public Policy in the Department of Journalism and Communications,
St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
Jennifer Lees-Marshment is an associate professor in the Department of
Politics and International Relations, University of Auckland, Auckland,
New Zealand.
Purushottam Papatla is the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute
Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Northwestern Mutual

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Data Science Institute in the Lubar School of Business, University of

Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
Vincent Raynauld is an associate professor in the Department of
Communication Studies, Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
and an affiliate professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières,
Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada.
André Turcotte is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and
Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Predicted probabilities of democratic candidates winning

nomination. (Source: Iowa Electronic Markets 2020
Democratic Nomination Data, accessed 08/21/2020) 44
Fig. 4.2 US searches on Google Trends. (Source: Google Trends,
Accessed 12/28/2020, 100 is Maximum Relative Interest) 48
Fig. 4.3 Top terms mentioned in 538 live blog coverage 50
Fig. 4.4 Top issues of voters from Twitter 2020 democratic primary.
(Source: https://www.elecurator.org/insights/the-­2020-­
democratic-­nomination-­in-­the-­twitterverse, Northwestern
Mutual Data Science Institute, accessed Feb 5, 2021) 53
Fig. 4.5 Interest in the issues identified by Elecurator Over Time.
(Source: https://www.elecurator.org/insights/the-­2020-­
democratic-­nomination-­in-­the-­twitterverse, Northwestern
Mutual Data Science Institute, accessed Feb 5, 2021) 54
Fig. 4.6 Voter sentiment toward candidates on racial relations by states’
political affiliations. (Source: https://www.elecurator.org/
insights/sentiment-­tracker-­dominant-­issues-­by-­candidate-­and-­
state-­grouping, Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute,
accessed Feb 5, 2021) 54
Fig. 4.7 Elecurator’s forecasts of the Electoral College. (Source:
https://www.elecurator.org/insights/forecast-­nov-­4,
Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute, accessed Feb 5,
2021)55

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 4.8 Elecurator’s predictions of the January 2021 Georgia Senate

Runoffs. (Source: https://www.elecurator.org/insights/
forecast-­of-­georgia-­senate-­runoffs-­our-­jan-­4-­2021-­update,
Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute, accessed Feb 5,
2021)56
Fig. 4.9 Interest In, Viewership of, Main Cable News Channels.
(Sources: Google Trends, 12/29/2020 and ratings from
Joyella (2020)) 57
Fig. 5.1 A model of market-oriented strategy and communication in
government67
Fig. 6.1 ANTIFA media cloud (N = 52,058 stories, 3,456 media sources
and 16,185 media links) 93
Fig. 6.2 Socialism media cloud (N = 106,305 stories; 7,407 media
sources and 19,379 media links) 97
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 The coalition of voters assembled by the Trump campaign

during the 2016 U.S. presidential election 31
Table 3.2 The changing coalitions 32

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Right Candidate

at the Worst Time

Jamie Gillies

Abstract The initial chapter will provide an overview of the 2020 cam-
paign and the chapters in this edited collection. It will aim to frame the
book in a comparative marketing and branding literature context with a
unifying theme and explain why the 2020 presidential election is a focal
point for the use of marketing and branding techniques.

Keywords Biden • Trump • Election • Branding • Marketing

The marketing and branding story of the 2020 American presidential elec-
tion may arguably be not how Joe Biden won but how Donald Trump
lost. With money, digital influence, social media manipulation, and main-
stream media saturation, as well as a national crisis in an election year,
Trump as an incumbent president seeking re-election should have sailed
to victory in 2020. Instead, the Biden campaign team outfoxed him in his

J. Gillies (*)
Communications and Public Policy, St. Thomas University,
Fredericton, NB, Canada
e-mail: jgillies@stu.ca

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
J. Gillies (ed.), Political Marketing in the 2020 U.S. Presidential
Election, Palgrave Studies in Political Marketing and Management,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86559-7_1
2 J. GILLIES

own henhouse. This book attempts to unravel some of the narratives of

what happened in 2020 and early 2021. Some of them are well known:
Biden’s campaign did a much better job at voter outreach and conversion
than the 2016 Clinton campaign, the salience of the management of the
pandemic did matter to undecided and independent voters, and the
Trump campaign’s digital advantage was squandered before the final
months of campaign. But some of the themes have garnered less attention
such as Biden’s religious voter outreach in swing states, their integration
of get out the vote organizations and the campaign, or Trump’s undisci-
plined endgame strategy which gave Biden a strategic advantage.
Joe Biden was the right candidate at the worst time for the United
States, with a pandemic that had shattered the country’s economy and
exposed glaring weaknesses with respect to government coordination as
hundreds of thousands of people died. In contrast, Donald Trump’s skills
did not lend themselves to this kind of public management, and for all his
bluster of playing the strong man, he was unable to commandeer the mas-
sive resources of the federal government to effectively deal with a crisis.
Analyzing the 2020 election result from a marketing and branding per-
spective and the subsequent aftermath of vote counting and Trump’s
refusal to concede culminating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection and
attack on the Capitol is challenging. There are still investigations on going
and likely criminal cases to follow. But the narratives in this edited collec-
tion attempt to shed light on a unique and one-of-a-kind national election
in the midst of a pandemic and how both teams used an arsenal of money,
airtime, social media influence, and voter outreach strategies to get to 270
electoral college votes.
Political Marketing in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election focuses on the
changes to typical marketing and branding strategies that have come to
pass since the 2016 election. This election was as much about a continu-
ous strategy of targeting and maintaining voter enthusiasm as it was about
swaying undecided voters in the electorate. That makes it different from
the horserace and implications of targeting undecided voters who were
central in 2016. Donald Trump had a base of support that proved unwav-
ering. Likewise, the Democrats counted on the same proportion of the
electorate to vote against Trump. The fight then was about maintaining
and expanding those numbers and driving every possible vote to the polls.
Like the 2016 election, it was also a harbinger for new and major branding
and marketing strategies, especially in social media and direct appeals to
voters. And again, like 2016, the 2020 election appeared to have
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE RIGHT CANDIDATE AT THE WORST TIME 3

campaigns that are unusual from a branding and marketing perspective,

especially with insurgent candidates in the Democratic race, a Democratic
Party presidential nominee who was a compromise candidate, and the
Trump campaign’s outreach to voters early on through an aggressive
social media strategy.
Following on the 2016 election which saw a reality television star battle
with the first female presidential candidate of a major party in the United
States, the unconventional political trends continue—and take new
forms—through a diverse and interesting cast of characters: not one but
four viable female presidential candidates, the first openly gay candidate
who was a legitimate contender, older and younger candidates represent-
ing different bases of an anti-Trump coalition, a Democratic socialist who
again competed for the nomination, and a late entry from a media mogul
billionaire. This phenomenon again holds new meaning and significance
for the study of the personal branding and track record of every candidate.
This book thus presents scholarly perspectives and research with
practitioner-­relatable content on practices and discourses that will con-
tinue to develop our current understandings of political marketing theo-
ries. This phenomenon requires sustained investigation which this book
provides. Additionally, the campaign has been widely described by politi-
cal observers and pundits as ‘theater’ or ‘reality television’, with increas-
ingly controversial statements made by the president as a new, normalized
political narrative. The 2020 campaign will undoubtedly be discussed far
into the future, with so many facets, including the post-election refusal to
concede and subsequent insurrection.
The second chapter by Jamie Gillies considers the broad outlines of the
Biden marketing and advertising campaigns in 2020. It provides a bird’s
eye view of the less exciting but more effective strategies the Biden team
used, especially in the context of recognizing the mistakes of the Clinton
campaign in 2016 and compensating for an increase in voter enthusiasm
and turnout on Election Day. The Biden campaign’s closing strategy was
unleashed about two months before Election Day, with a total saturation
of airwaves, cable and network television, and digital ad buys that dwarfed
Trump’s and targeted voter outreach and micro-targeting in swing states.
Disciplined right to the end, the only place they came up short was in
North Carolina.
The third chapter, by Vincent Raynauld and André Turcotte, uses poll-
ing data from Emerson College Polling to consider the broader ground
game of both campaigns, looking in particular at the major factors that
4 J. GILLIES

really shaped the outcome of the 2020 campaign. The marketing and
communication appeals employed by both campaigns are highlighted to
address one of the central questions about the election, namely did Donald
Trump’s base supporters fail to turn out on Election Day—which effec-
tively led to Joe Biden’s electoral success—or did Donald Trump fail to
secure and expand his reach in order to garner enough electoral support?
The fourth chapter, by Neil Bendle and Purushottam Papatla, examines
political marketing in the 2020 elections through various empirical datas-
ets. Despite all the Democratic primary’s drama, the clear early favorite,
Joe Biden, won. The importance of endorsements and momentum was
illustrated along with the limits of money. Covid-19 took a central role
while the merging of online and in-person campaigns were exemplified by
the rise and fall of President Trump’s campaign manager. Previously
unavailable data and techniques—for example, social media, Google
search, sentiment, and text analysis—can now analyze candidates’
strengths, the public’s interests, and even the transmission of falsehoods.
New sources of predictions, beyond traditional polling, can be used by
political marketers to better manage their strategies. Of most importance
is that the chapter shows that there were methods that showed the 2020
race as fairly predictable, despite challenging campaign dynamics.
The Trump campaign branding and marketing is not only more inter-
esting, it also exposed the down side of having total saturation of brand
recognition. The bulk of the book considers Trump as an incumbent run-
ning for re-election and the Trump campaign strategies to get a second
term. Lost in many of the narratives about the 2020 election is that from
a branding and marketing standpoint, the Trump campaign should have
won. But its strengths were also its greatest weaknesses. This is where
marketing and branding analysis is really important because there are a
series of valuable lessons for practitioners here.
The fifth chapter, by Edward Elder and Jennifer Lees-Marshment, con-
siders President Trump’s marketing strategy and his failure to offer a new
direction for 2020 given the magnitude of the pandemic. As they argue, it
would have been strategically wise for Trump to deliver on his promises,
as well as stay in touch with—and offer a new product offering that
appealed to—the U.S. public at large. Instead, Trump focused on cultur-
ally divisive elements and sought to pillory Democrats. The lack of com-
munication discipline became evident as he continued to focus on personal
grievances than crisis leadership qualities. This chapter highlights Trump’s
actions and communication during his time in office and in the lead up to
 1 INTRODUCTION: THE RIGHT CANDIDATE AT THE WORST TIME 5

the 2020 presidential election against two political marketing theories: the
Market-Orientated Party Strategy and Contemporary Governing Leaders’
Communication models.
The sixth chapter, by Brian Conley, gets even more specific about
Trump’s re-election campaign. Given that Donald Trump was unconven-
tional as both a candidate and as president, it was only natural that he also
upended governing norms on the scope of executive authority and the
balance of power. That should have weakened his chances of re-election,
but as Conley suggests, the impact of the disruption of norms on Trump,
particularly among partisan Republican voters, was negligible. This cir-
cumstance raises questions not only about the political marketing strate-
gies that Trump and his re-election campaign used to engineer his political
resilience but also about the lasting impact his campaign may have on the
practice of democratic governance in the United States. In particular, the
chapter considers attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement and Antifa,
as well as the theme of socialism, as case studies in Trump’s resilience and
market-oriented strategy.
The seventh chapter, by Kenneth Cosgrove, builds on his unique
research on brand loyalty and heritage. It offers a comparison of Trump’s
2020 and Jimmy Carter’s 1980 re-election campaigns’ strategic position
similarities and how the differing electoral results show the power of the
Trump brand with almost the entire base and party coalition supporting
him. Carter, on the other hand, saw Democrats abandon him in droves in
1980. Cosgrove also analyzes the post-election refusal to concede as a case
of bad ethics in marketing and considers the Trump brand in the context
of the failed legal challenges and subsequent insurrection.
The eighth chapter, by Robert Busby, addresses the challenges of
advancing a populist-oriented campaign during the 2020 pandemic crisis
and considers Trump’s refusal to pivot to crisis leadership in the midst of
his re-election. The chapter also considers the contemporary nature of
right-wing populism and whether the pandemic prevented the full har-
nessing of the kind of insurgency campaign Trump ran in 2016. He
attempts to reconcile the handling of the pandemic by the political estab-
lishment in Washington with Trump’s anti-establishment populist identity.
The election of Joe Biden in the 2020 campaign was both an entirely
predictable and completely bizarre result. But it comes as no surprise that
the energy created in the 2020 campaign, for better or worse, started and
ended with Trump. It is why much of this book, despite Biden’s win, is still
focused on the Trump campaign and that the more interesting marketing
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “What!” roared the big lout, whom he had slightly touched upon the
arm. “Who the devil are you? Keep your hands off of me, you fool!”
The person on whom Adam looked was Gallows, whose face,
florid almost to being purple, was so savagely contorted as to
comprise an insult in itself.
“My cross-eyed friend,” retorted Adam, whose temper had risen
without delay, “have done looking at yourself, if you would see no
fool. If you will tell me which hand I put on you, I’ll cut it off, else I
may live to see it rot!”
The company had turned about at once. Pinchbecker was there,
with his satellite, Psalms Higgler, the little white-eyed scamp that
Adam had once dropped from the near-by window. The foppish
young Englishman, who owned the horse outside, was likewise in
the party. They all saw the burly Gallows turn to them hopelessly,
befuddled by Adam’s answer.
“You be a fool!” he roared again, his eyes bulging out of their
sockets in his wrath, “and I be the fool-killer!”
The company guffawed at this, the monster’s solitary sally of wit.
“You are a liar by the fact that you live,” said Rust. “Bah, you
disgust me with the thought of having the duties, which you have so
patently and outrageously neglected, thrust upon me. Begone.
There’s no fire to roast a barbecue, if I should be minded to spit you!”
The creature looked again at his fellows, who had obviously egged
him on.
“He insults you right prettily, good Gallows,” said the dandy, who
was himself a rascal banished from his own country. “But he dare not
fight you, we can see it plainly.”
“With you thrown in, I dare say there might be a moment’s sport in
a most unsavory blood-letting,” said Rust, whose hand went to his
sword-hilt calmly. “I should want some fresh air if I stuck either one of
you carrion-fed buzzards.”
Gallows knew by this that it was time to draw his blade. “You be a
fool and I be the fool-killer,” he roared as before, this being his best
hold on language to suit the occasion. Only now he came for Adam
like a butcher.
“Outside—go outside, gentlemen!” cried the landlord excitedly.
“Go outside!” said the voice of some one who was not visible. It
was Randolph, concealed in the adjoining room and watching the
proceedings through a narrow crack, where he had opened the door.
“Go on out, and I’ll fight you!” bellowed Gallows.
“After you,” said Rust, whose blade was out and being swiftly
passed under his exacting eye. “Go out first. You will need one more
breath than I.”
The brute obeyed, as if he had to do so and knew it, receiving
Adam’s order like the clod he was.
The other creatures made such a scrambling to see the show, and
otherwise evinced such an abnormal interest in the coming fight, that
Adam had no trouble in divining that the whole affair had been
prearranged, and that if he did not get killed, he would be arrested,
should he slay his opponent. He concluded he was something of a
match for the whole outfit.
“Have at you, mountain of foul meat,” he said, as he tossed down
his hat. “What a mess you will make, done in slices!”
The young dandy laughed, despite himself, from his place by the
door.
Gallows needed no further exasperations. He came marching up
to Rust and made a hack at him, mighty enough and vicious enough
to break down the stoutest guard and cleave through a man’s whole
body as well.
Rust had expected no less than such a stroke. He spared his steel
the task of parrying the Gallows’ slash. Nimbly leaping aside, he
made a motion that had something debonair in its execution, and cut
a ghastly big flap, like a steak, from the monster’s cheek.
The fellow let out an awful bellow and ran at his opponent, striking
at him like a mad Hercules.
 “Spare yourself, fool-killer,” said Adam. He dared to bow, as he
dodged a mighty onslaught, in which Gallows used his sword like a
hatchet, and then he flicked the giant’s ear away, bodily, taking
something also of his jowl, for good measure.
The great hulk stamped about there like an ox, the blood
hastening down from his face and being flung in spatters about him.
Adam next cut him deeply in the muscle of his great left arm.
“I warm to my work,” he said, as he darted actively away and back.
“Gentlemen, is your choice for a wing or a leg of the ill-smelling
bird?”
The dandy, fresh from England, guffawed and cried “Bravo!” He
had been born a gentleman, in spite of himself.
The fight was a travesty on equality. The monster was absolutely
helpless. He was simply a vast machine for butchery, but he must
needs first catch his victim before he could perform his offices. He
was a terrible sight, with his great sword raised on high, or ripping
downward through the air, as he ran, half blinded by his own gore, to
catch the rover, who played with him, slicing him handily, determined
not to kill the beast and so to incur a penalty for murder.
The creatures inside the tavern, appalled by the exhibition they
had brought about, saw that their monster was soon to be a
staggering tower of blood and wounds.
“Don’t let him get away! Kill him! Kill him!” said the voice of
Randolph, from behind the others.
Adam heard him. He saw Pinchbecker shrink back at once.
Psalms Higgler, however, glad of an excuse and ready to take
advantage of a man already sufficiently beset, came scrambling out.
The foppish gentleman was too much of a sport to take a hand
against such a single swordsman as he found in Rust.
Aware that he was to have no chance, and convinced abruptly that
these wretches had plotted to kill him, Adam deftly avoided Gallows,
as the dreadful brute came again upon him, and slashing the fellow’s
leg behind the knee, ham-strung him instantly.
 Roaring like a wounded bull, the creature dropped down on his
side, and then got upon his hands and knees and commenced to
crawl, wiping out his eyes with his reddened hands.
Unable to restrain his rage, and fearing his intended victim would
yet avoid him, Higgler being already at bay and disarmed, Randolph
came abruptly out from the tavern himself, pistol in hand, to perform
the task which otherwise was doomed to failure.
“Call the guard!” he cried. “Call the guard!”
Adam had been waiting for some such treachery. He cut at the
pistol the second it rose, knocking it endways and slicing Randolph’s
arm, superficially, from near the wrist to the elbow. He waited then
for nothing more.
Across the road, before any one guessed his intention, he was up
on the back of the horse, before the yelled protest of the English
gentleman came to his ears.
“Gentlemen all,” he called to the group, “good evening.”
Clapping his heels to the ribs of the restive animal, he rode madly
away, just as Isaiah Pinchbecker, with half a dozen constables came
running frantically upon the scene.
 CHAPTER XXXI.

A REFUGEE.

Irresponsibly joyous, thus to be in a saddle, on a spirited horse,

Rust was soon dashing across the common and turning about like a
centaur, for ease and grace, glanced back to see who might be
joining in the race. His naked sword was still in his hand. It was red
from point to hilt. He wiped it on the horse, thereby causing the
animal to plunge and to run in a frenzy of nervousness.
Adam chortled. The affair from beginning to end, from his present
standpoint, appealed to his sense of humor. The consequences of
his adventure would be presented to his mind soon enough. He
merely knew now that he had won out of a tight corner, as a
gentleman should, that a glorious animal was bounding beneath him
and, that sweet night air came rushing upon him as if it opened its
arms to receive him.
Aware that he would soon be pursued, and mentally
acknowledging that the horse was not his own, he rode to a farm-
house about a mile or so out from the town, and there dismounted.
Reluctantly he said farewell to the charger, bidding the farmer have
the animal returned to Boston in the morning, with his thanks and
compliments. For the service he presented the wondering man with
a piece of silver, the last he had of the small amount left him after
paying the fares of the beef-eaters up to Massachusetts.
 Coolly inviting himself to have a bite of the farmer’s scanty supper,
he bade the man good night, about five minutes before the mounted
constables came riding hotly to the place. He even heard them,
when they left the farm and began to scour the woods to jump him
up. At this he smiled with rare good humor, confident of the powers
of superior wood-craft to baffle anybody or anything in all
Massachusetts, save alone an Indian.
Understanding all the delighted chucklings of the forest as he did,
he felt at once secure among the trees, as one of the family.
Moreover he loved to be wandering in the woods at night. He
continued to walk, on and on, beginning to wonder at last what he
really intended to do. Then, at the thought of Garde, who might be
expecting to see him, and whom he very much desired again to see,
he waxed somewhat impatient with this enforced flight from the town
where she was.
The more he thought upon it, then, the more impossible it seemed
for him to return. Against Randolph, enthroned in power, and against
all his wretched disciples, he could not expect to breathe a word
which would avail to get him justice. It would be sheer madness to
make the attempt. The creatures would charge him with all the
crimes on the calendar, and, swearing all to one statement, would
convict him of anything they chose. The whole affair had been
planned to beat him, or worse, and to a galling extent it had quite
succeeded. He was balked, completely and absolutely, in
whatsoever direction his meditations turned. To try to see Garde
would be fairly suicidal. Not to see her, especially after his promises,
would be, to a man so much in love as he, a living death.
And again, the beef-eaters. What was to become of his faithful
retinue? They would arrive there, only to find that he had again
deserted them, leaving them wholly at the mercy of Randolph and
his jackals. These demons would not be slow at recognizing who
and what Pike and Halberd were, from episodes of the past. The two
would go straight into the lion’s mouth, at the Crow and Arrow.
He thought at first of going to Plymouth. He could write to Garde
from there, he reflected, and also to Halberd and Pike. But he soon
concluded that this would be to walk merely into the other end of the
enemy’s trap, for no good or comforting purpose. New York
presented itself as a jurisdiction where Randolph’s arm would have
no power to do him harm. But New York was a long way off. If he
went there, not only would he miss seeing Garde, but he could not
warn his retinue in time to keep them out of Randolph’s clutches.
The business was maddening. He began to think, as a
consequence of dwelling on the hopelessness of his own situation,
that Randolph would be aiming next at Garde herself, in wreaking his
dastardly vengeance for his past defeats. This was intolerable. He
halted, there in the dark woods, swaying between the good sense of
hiding and the nonsense of going straight back to the town, to carry
Garde away from the harpies, bodily.
A picture of old David Donner, stricken, helpless, a child, arose in
his mind, to confront him and to mock his Quixotic scheme. He could
not carry both Garde and her grandfather away to New York, nor
even to the woods. He was penniless. This was not the only
obstacle, even supposing Donner would consent so to flee, which
was not at all likely.
It was also certain that Garde would not permit him to carry her off
and leave the old man behind. But at least, he finally thought, he
could go back to the town and be near, to protect her, if occasion
should require a sword and a ready wit. Could he but manage to do
this—to go there secretly and remain there unknown—he could
gather his beef-eaters about him and together they could and would
combat an army!
But how to go back and be undetected, that was the question. In
the first place he despised the idea of doing anything that did not
smack of absolute boldness and fearlessness. Yet Boston was a
seething whirlpool of Randolph’s power, at this time. Simply to be
caught like a rat and killed like a pest would add nothing of glory to
his name, nor could it materially add to Garde’s happiness and
safety.
Driven into a corner of his brain, as it were, by all these moves and
counter-moves on the chess-board of the situation, he presently
conceived a plan which made him hug himself in sheer delight.
He would simply disguise himself as an Indian and go to town to
make a treaty with Randolph, the Big-man-afraid-to-be-chief.
This so tickled his fancy that, had an Indian settlement been near
at hand, he would have been inside his buckskins and war-paint and
back to Boston ahead of the constables themselves. In such a guise,
he told himself, he could manage to see his sweetheart, he could get
his beef-eaters clear of danger, baffle his foes, and arrange to carry
both Garde and her grandfather away to safety.
But the first consideration was, where should he find an Indian?
He was aware that the Red men had been pushed backward and
westward miles from the towns of the whites. It was years since he
had roamed through the forests and mountains——years since he
had known where his old-time, red brothers built their lodges. There
could be but one means of finding a camp, namely: to walk onward,
to penetrate fairly to the edge of the wilderness beyond.
Nothing daunted by the thought of distance, he struck out for the
west. Like the Indians themselves, he could smell the points of the
sunrise and sunset, unerringly. With boyish joy in his thoughts, and
in the dreams he fashioned of the hair-breadth events that would
happen when he arrived in the town in his toggery, he plodded along
all night, happy once more and contented.
 CHAPTER XXXII.

A FOSTER PARENT.

Adam covered many a mile before the morning. Mindless of his

hunger, spurred by the thought that he must soon be back in Boston,
he felt that the further he went the more he must hasten. Thus he
marched straight on till noon.
He rested briefly at this time, filled his craving stomach with water,
and again made a start. In fifteen minutes he came upon a clearing,
at the edge of a little valley where up-jutting rocks were as plentiful
as houses in a city. Pausing for a moment, to ascertain the nature of
the place, and to prepare himself against possible surprise, he
presently approached a small log hut, of more than usually rude
construction.
There appeared to be no signs whatsoever of life about the place.
No smoke ascended from the chimney; there was no animal in sight,
not even so much as a dog.
Adam glanced hurriedly about the acre or so of land, beholding
evidences of recent work. A tree had been felled, not far away, within
the week. In a neat little patch of tilled soil, green corn stood two feet
high and growing promisingly.
Going to the cabin-door he knocked first and gave it a push
afterward, for it was not latched, although it was nearly closed. There
being no response from the inside, he entered. The light entered with
him. It revealed a strange and dreadful scene.
On the floor lay a man, dressed, half raised on his elbow, looking
up at the visitor with staring eyes, while he moved his lips without
making a sound. A few feet away sat a little brown baby-boy, clothed
only in a tiny shirt. He looked up at big Adam wistfully. Strewn about
were a few utensils for cooking, a bag which had once contained
flour, the dust of which was in patches everywhere, and an empty
water-bucket and dipper, with all the bedding and blankets from a
rude wooden bunk, built against the wall.
In amazement Adam stood looking at the man. In the haggard
face, with its unkempt beard and glassy eyes he fancied he saw
something familiar. Memory knocked to enter his brain. Then, with a
suddenness that gave him a shock, he recognized a man he had
known in England—an elder brother of Henry Wainsworth, supposed
to have died years before—drowned while attempting to escape from
an unjust sentence of imprisonment for treason.
“Wainsworth!” he said, “good faith! what is the meaning of this?”
The man sank back on the floor, a ghost of a smile passing across
his face. He moved his lips again, but Adam heard not a word.
Bending quickly down, he became aware that the man was
begging for water. He caught up the bucket and hastened forth,
presently finding the spring, to which a little path had been worn in
the grass.
Back at once, he placed the dipper to the dried-out lips and saw
this fellow-being drink with an evidence of joy such as can only come
to the dying. Wainsworth shivered a little, as the dipper left his teeth,
and jerked his hand toward the silent child, sitting so near, on the
floor. Adam comprehended. He gave more of the water to the small,
brown baby. It patted the dipper with its tiny hands and looked up at
him dumbly.
“What in the world has happened here?” said Rust.
Making a mighty effort, the man on the floor partially raised his
head and arms. He looked at Adam with a hungering light in his
eyes. “I’m—done—for,” he said, thickly and feebly.
Adam hustled together the blankets on the floor and made a
pillow, which he placed for Wainsworth to lie on. “Shall I put you into
the bed?” he asked.
The man shook his head. “I’m crushed,” he said, winking from his
eyes the already gathering film that tells of the coming end. “Tree—
fell—killed the—wife. I—crawled—here.”
Adam looked at him helplessly. He knew the man was dying. He
felt what agonies the man must have suffered. “Man!” he said, “can’t
I get you something to eat?”
Wainsworth waved his hand toward the wreckage strewed on the
floor. “Nothing—here,” he said. Then he made a great effort, the
obvious rally of his strength. “Save the—boy,” he implored. “Give him
a—chance.... Don’t—tell—about me. I married—his mother—
Narragansett—God bless—her.... Give—him—a—chance....
Thanks.”
As he mentioned the child’s mother, his eyes gave up two tears—
crystals, which might have represented his soul, for it had quietly
escaped from his broken body.
Adam, kneeling above him, looked for a moment at his still face,
on which the shadow of a smile rested. Then he looked at the little,
brown youngster, half Narragansett Indian, gazing up in his
countenance with a timid, questioning look, winking his big black
eyes slowly, and quite as deliberately moving his tiny toes.
It was not a situation to be thought out nor coped with easily. To
have found any human being in this terrible plight would have been
enough, but to have found Henry Wainsworth’s brother thus, and to
have him tell such a brief, shocking story, and make of his visitor all
the things which Adam would have to become at once, was enough
to make him stand there wondering and wondering upon it all.
“You poor little rascal,” he said to the child, at last.
He selected a shovel and a pick, from some tools which he noted,
in a corner, and laying aside his sword, he went to work, on the
preface to his duties, out by the patch of corn where he found the
pretty, young Indian mother, clasped and held down to earth in an all
too ardent embrace, by an arm of the fallen tree.
When he had padded up the mound over the two closed human
volumes, he was faint with hunger. He carried the tools again to the
house, and stood as before, looking at the baby-boy, who still sat
where he had left him, on the floor.
“Well, I suppose you are hungry, you little brown man,” he said. “I
must see what there is to be had.”
There was little opportunity for extended explorations. The one
room had contained the all of Wainsworth and his Narragansett
partner. Rust soon found himself wondering what the two had lived
upon. What flour and meal there had been, the man, despite his two
crushed legs, had pulled down, from a box-like cupboard, on the
wall, together with a bit of dried meat. Of the latter only a dry
fragment remained, still tied to a string, while of the meal and flour,
only the empty bags gave evidence that they once had existed.
There was no way possible for Adam to know that in the forest, not
far away, the lone woodsman had set his traps, for squirrels and
rabbits, nor that fifteen minutes’ walk from the door a trout stream
had furnished its quota to the daily fare. He only knew that there was
nothing edible to be found here now. There was salt, a bit of grease,
on a clean white chip of pine, and a half gourd, filled with broken-up
leaves, which had doubtless been steeped for some manner of tea
or drink.
“Partner,” he said, to the child, “someone has been enforcing
sumptuary laws upon us. I hesitate in deciding whether we shall take
our water salted or fresh.”
With his hand on the hilt of his sword he regarded the youngster
earnestly. Nothing prettier than the little naked fellow could have
been imagined, howbeit he was not so plump as a child of his age
should be, for the lack of nourishment had already told upon him
markedly. Adam felt convinced, from various indications, that the tree
which had done its deadly work had fallen about a week before, and
that Wainsworth had not been able to do anything more than to crawl
to the cabin, to die, neither for himself or the child.
For a time the rover wondered what he must do. His own plans
had nearly disappeared from his mind. He reflected that a child so
brown as this, so obviously half a little Narragansett, would be ill
received by the whites. The Indians would be far more likely to
cherish the small man, according to his worth. He therefore believed
the best thing he could do would be to push onward, in the hope of
finding an Indian settlement soon. There were several reasons, still
remaining unaltered, why it would be wiser not to take the child to
Boston.
“Well, our faces are dirty, partner,” he said, at the end of a long
cogitation, in which the baby had never ceased to look up in his
countenance and wink his big eyes, wistfully. “Let’s go out and have
a bath.”
He took the tiny chap up in his arms and carried him forth to the
spring. Here, in the warm sunlight, he got down on his knees in the
grass, bathed his protégé, over and over again, for the pleasure it
seemed to give the child and the joy it was to himself, to feel the little
wet, naked fellow in his hands.
The sun performed the offices of a towel. Without putting his tiny
shirt back upon him, Adam rolled the small bronze bit of humanity
about his back, patting his velvety arms and thighs and laughing like
the grown-up boy he was, till the little chap gurgled and crowed in
tremendous delight. But it having been only the freshness of the
water, air and sunlight which had somewhat invigorated the baby, he
presently appeared to grow a little dull and weary. Adam became
aware that it was time to be moving. He washed out the child’s wee
shirt and hung it through his belt to dry as they went. Then taking a
light blanket from the cabin, for the child’s use at night, he left the
cabin behind and proceeded onward as before.
He walked till late in the afternoon without discovering so much as
a sign of the Indian settlement he was seeking. By this time his own
pangs of hunger had become excruciating. It was still too early in the
summer for berries or nuts to be ripe, and the half green things
which he found where the sun shone the warmest were in no
manner fit to be offered to the child, as food.
Arriving at another small valley, as the sun was dipping into the
western tree-tops, the rover sat down for a rest, and to plan
something better than this random wandering toward the sunset. He
had chuckled encouragement to the child from time to time, laughing
in the little fellow’s face, but hardly had he caught at the subtle signs
on the small face, at which a mother-parent would have stared wild-
eyed in agony.
Now, however, as he sat the tiny man on the grass before him, he
saw in the baby’s eyes such a look as pierced him to the quick. For a
moment the infinite wistfulness, the dumb questioning, the
uncomplaining silence of it, made him think, or hope, the child was
only sad. He got down on all fours at once.
“Partner,” said he, jovially, “you are disappointed in me. I make
poor shift as a mother. Do you want to be cuddled, or would you
rather be tickled?”
He laid the little chap gently on his back and tried to repeat the
frolic of the earlier hours. He rolled the small bronze body in the
grass, as before, and petted him fondly. But the baby merely winked
his eyes. He seemed about to cry, but he made no sound. Adam’s
fingers ceased their play, for the joy departed from them swiftly.
“Maybe you’re tired and sleepy,” he crooned. “Shall I put on your
shirt and sing you a little Indian lullaby? Yes? That’s what he wants,
little tired scamp.”
He adjusted the abbreviated shirt, awkwardly, but tenderly, after
which he held his partner in his arms and hummed and sang the
words of a Wampanoag song, which he had heard in his boyhood,
times without number. The song started with addresses to some of
the elements, thus:
 “Little Brook, it is night,
Be quiet, and let my baby sleep.

“Little wind, it is night,

Go away, and let my baby sleep.

“Little storm, it is night,

Be still, and let my baby sleep.

“Little wolf, it is night,

Howl not, and let my baby sleep.”

and after many verses monotonously soothing, came an

incantation:

“Great Spirit, I place my babe

Upon the soft fur of thy breast,
Knowing Thou wilt protect,
As I cannot protect;
And therefore, oh Great Spirit,
Guard my child in slumber.”

Adam sang this song like a pleading. But his little partner could not
sleep, or feared to sleep. Then the rover looked at the tiny face and
realized that the child would soon be dying of starvation. At this he
started to his feet, abruptly.
He had undergone the pains of hunger often, himself; he was not
impatient now with the pangs in his stomach, nor the weakness in
his muscles. But he could not bear the thought of the child so
perishing, here in the wilderness.
He saw poor Wainsworth again, and heard him beg that the child
be given a chance. He thought of the man’s shattered life, his
escape from persecution, his isolation, in which he had preferred the
society of his Indian wife and child to association with his kind. Then
he blamed himself for coming further into this deserted region, when
he knew that by going back, at least he could find something for the
child to eat—something that would save its life!
But he could not forget that he himself was a refugee. Wrongly or
rightly, Randolph was still on his track. Nothing in his own case had
been altered, but the case was no longer one concerning himself
alone. He took the child on his arm, where he had carried him
already many miles, and faced about.
“Partner, let them take me,” he said. “I wish them joy of it.”
He started back for Boston, for in the child’s present extremity, the
nearest place where he could be sure of finding food was the only
one worthy a thought.
 CHAPTER XXXIII.

REPUDIATED SILVER.

Sometime, along toward the middle of the night, Adam tripped, on

a root which lay in his path, and in catching himself so that his small
partner should not be injured, he sprained his foot. He proceeded
onward without sparing the member, however, for he had begun to
feel a fever of impatience.
His foot swelled. It finally pained him excessively, so that he
limped. He wore away the night, but when the morning came, he
was obliged to snatch an hour of sleep, so great was the sense of
exhaustion come upon him.
His face had become pale. With his hair unkempt, his eyes
expressive of the fever in his veins and his mouth somewhat drawn,
he was not a little haggard, as he resumed his lame, onward march.
The child in his arms was no burden to his enduring strength, but as
a load on his heart the little chap was heavy indeed. Sleeping, the
miniature man appeared to be sinking in a final rest, so wan had his
tiny face become. Waking, he gazed at Adam with such a dumb
inquiry ever present in his great, wistful eyes, that Rust began to
wish he would complain—would cry, would make some little sound to
break his baby silence.
They were obliged to rest frequently, throughout the day. Try as he
might, Adam could not cover the ground rapidly. Whenever he
resumed walking, after sitting for a moment on a log, or a rock, he